So if you’re interested in what a director does, or doesn’t do, go see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. It’s a great film education watching Rob Marshall, the director replacing Gore Verbinski, wreck the Pirates franchise in one go. Because so many key elements are carried over from Verbinski’s insanely successful first three films—same star Johnny Depp, same writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, same producer Jerry Bruckheimer, same cinematographer Dariusz Walski, same composer Hans Zimmer, same costume designer Penny Rose, and so on—you can more readily identify the factor that’s making this Pirates movie slow and boring and leaden and lifeless. Say a lot of things against Gore Verbinski’s Pirates movies if you like—a lot of people do, especially about the second and third ones—that they’re too loud and frenetic and confusing and cluttered and crazy and have everything thrown into them including the kitchen sink. But the point is, they’re not slow, boring, leaden, and lifeless.

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The political establishment’s racist, authoritarian reaction to the 1992 LA riots—blaming broken black families, massing cops and troops, and Ron Paul’s advice to his family on how to kill black “animals” and get away with it…

I’ve responded to the article in several Facebook posts, but this is important enough to deserve a more formal response. So here it is.

Gutman’s article is a shoddy, dishonest mess, but it will be effective, because the Nation has a better rep than the author’s usual venue, The Daily Beast. So Gutman’s smear will stick, eroding support for the YPG/J, the one heroic faction in the miserable Syrian War…

The notion that the French are cowards is total bullshit, and anybody who knows anything about European military history knows damn well that over the past thousand years, the French have the most glorious military history in Europe, maybe the world.

This article was first published in The eXile on November 5, 2007 FRESNO, CA — By the time you finish this column you will be able to destroy huge buildings, kill hundreds of people in a few minutes, and strike terror…